


lovely.

by Griftings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: #dickoff2019, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drabble/Oneshot Collection, F/M, Gen, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2020-09-28 14:29:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20427488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griftings/pseuds/Griftings
Summary: A collection of drabbles and oneshots, largely unrelated to each other and (hopefully) staying within 500-1.5k words, as challenged by Han_shot_first. Ratings vary per ficlet. The majority of these feature an ambiguously-aged Arya, so the underage warning does not necessarily need to apply unless you specifically want it to.Or, #dickoff2019.





	1. master

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Han_shot_first](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Han_shot_first/gifts).
**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the House of Black and White, names have power, and consequences._  
explicit rating. no additional warnings apply. (CW for rough (consensual) sex as requested by a reader.) 1,046 words.

It is a secret shame: he  _ likes _ when she calls him  _ Master. _

The title is not meant as ownership, merely acknowledgement of his status as one of the elite Faceless Men. The other acolytes call him this, and they call his brothers and sisters such as well. The girl is not his bedslave, she’s his apprentice: she comes to him willingly, eagerly: _ she _ was the one who sought his flesh, who pursued him determinedly despite his citing inappropriateness and turning her away multiple times.

It is not uncommon among their ranks. Faceless Men are still but man and man has needs. Brother and sisters sleep together, Masters and acolytes-- though to sleep with one’s own apprentice is discouraged, it is not forbidden so long as favoritism in training is not shown. She is not pressured into laying with him. It does not influence her teaching, does not grant her any boons that are not unearned by her skill as an assassin.

“ _ M-master, _ ” she breathes, her hands in his hair, pulling on the strands as he sets his tongue against her pearl and laps, taking the girlish drink that drips from her into his mouth.

He should not feel guilt for enjoying it. It should not make him hard and throbbing just to hear her call him this. It is his job. As if a man would release in his pants if his wife called him  _ butcher, _ or  _ tailor, _ or  _ stablehand. _

He rumbles against her cunt, unable to help the moan her voice draws from him. He licks into her slit, feeling the warmth and the wetness, the taste of her lust for him, her Master. She does not lay with any of her fellow acolytes, nor any of his own brothers or sisters, though he knows overtures to her have been made by both. She seeks only him. Her Master. He moans again.

“Please,” she gasps, hands tightening in his hair, hips rolling to push her girlish slit harder against his mouth. “Please, Master.”

He is sure she knows how that inflames him. She is clever, far too clever for her own good: she did not use his title so frequently when they first began their carnal meeting. It was only when she realized how much he enjoyed it that she began to use it liberally. She employs her tricks without hesitation to get her way when they share a bed. If given his druthers he would feast upon her cunt until she was a quivering mess, would bring her to peak over and over and over until she was so strung out that her muscles could not hold her weight.

She’s more straightforward, more interested in being filled immediately. The need of youth for instant gratification. She does not enjoy foreplay so passionately as he does.

“Fuck me, Master, please,” she keens, clenching needily where his tongue spears into her.

How can he deny such a sweet request of his little apprentice? What sort of Master would he be?

The noise she makes when he sinks into her is high-pitched, stuttering with her breath. He thrusts; her breasts bounce; she cries out: “ _ Master! _ ”

He cannot help his groan, nor the way his pounding increases in strength and speed. He prefers to work into her, to open her gently, to take his time to make sure that she is comfortable around him. It is a tight fit; she is flowered and a woman bedded but still much smaller than him, petite in stature such that makes his length seem even larger to take. She has told him that she enjoys the stretch, finds it pleasing to feel just shy of pained. 

“Master, please,” she whimpers into his ear, grabbing his buttocks and pulling him closer, nails digging into the muscle of his ass. Yes. The little shit knows.

He thrusts harder, skin meeting in an audible slap, punching breaths from her. She is getting closer, already pushed close to peaking from his tongue against her and now standing at the precipice from being filled by his cock. He can tell because she squeezes around him like a vice, gets improbably hotter and wetter. He himself is close as well. If she called him by his favorite and most hated title a few more times--

Her cunt clenches rhythmically, pulsing around him, a gush of fluid pours from her to soak his testicles and make the sound of their meeting skin even louder. When she comes it is not with a cry or a squeal; she breathes, softly, intimately, “ _ Jaqen. _ ”

He climaxes inside her in a rush, emptying himself to fill her, seed planted deep inside. Normally he spills upon her thighs or belly, her breasts occasionally, her lips if she is feeling particularly saucy. He does not often come into her cunt. Despite all this, it is dread which fills him, not pleasure.

He grabs her throat and squeezes it, harder than is their usual wont when playing in the sheets. Her gasp this time is not affected or caused by delight. “Jaqen is dead,” he tells her in a whispered hiss, pressing against her windpipe. Her cunt tightens; reactively he twitches another pump of seed into her. “He no longer exists. That name is not to be used.”

They do not bring violence into the bed. They may play at it, but true pain is left for the training room. Bruises take the form of lovebites, not strikes; blood may be drawn accidentally by teeth but rarely on purpose. His cock is still loosening seed and her girlhood is hot and sopping, but there is a chill in his veins nonetheless.

She blinks at him slowly, seeming to have trouble with the thought, likely caused by the sudden lack of oxygen. When he relaxes his grip upon her throat blood rushes to the skin, flushing it red. She will have a bruise where he has grabbed her. Shame fills him, and guilt.

On the other hand, her pupils are blown. She pulls her lips between her teeth to chew. “Yes, Master,” she murmurs, voice demure, but there is not fear on her face at the aggression, but lust.

He feels, wretchedly, as though her wanton moans of  _ Master _ are now the least of his problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's get dicking


	2. choking vs strangulation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _the important distinction between choking and strangulation._  
explicit rating. no additional warnings apply. (CW for rough (consensual) sex as requested by a reader.) 600 words.

It is a pet peeve of his. She is aware of this, and he is aware she is aware of it, and yet she consistently misuses the word when they grapple. He is quite sure she does it on purpose.

When he is teaching her how to fashion a garrote from common and unconventional items, she says with a smirk, “Now I can choke anyone, anywhere.”

He glares at her, annoyed. “That is not the proper term and a girl knows it.”

Her smirk grows, a heat in her eyes. Further annoyance, for they are training and he mislikes indulgences that interfere with her betterment. “What’s the difference again? I’ve forgotten.” She lifts a hand, cups a breast through her acolyte’s robes. “Maybe you should show me?”

Well. Who is he to deny knowledge?

Normally when she pleasures him with her mouth she uses her lips, her tongue. She suckles the head and licks at the underside, delights in watching him lose control, stares up at him as she works, gray eyes wide to take it all in, the destruction of her Master’s composure. Now her eyes are pinched shut, expression tight and strained; his cock moves within her throat, resting on the back of her tongue, his pelvis pressed against her nose as he works himself as deep into her mouth as he can reach.

“This,” he tells her, panting as he thrusts, “is a choke.”

The musculature of her throat spasms as her body instinctively attempts to cough around him; it squeezes his cock delightfully. The noise of him moving into and from the channel is wet and violent; unable to swallow saliva, it pools in her mouth to drip from her lips, to smear against his testicles where they press into her chin. Her breath rattles, in the brief windows she has to draw it whenever he pulls away minutely, and again she tries to cough. “Choking is caused by--” He gasps as she rolls her tongue purposefully across a vein at the base. “--an obstruction in the throat. Strangulation is a force exerting pressure upon the windpipe from the outside. A girl sees now? She understands?”

She moans around his manhood and the vibration makes him gasp again. One of her hands is pinching a nipple through her robe and the other has rucked it up to disappear between her legs. She’s touching herself while kneeling to take him. He groans and grinds in harder, harsh panting breaths.

Footsteps.

Quickly he pulls away from her, shoving his manhood back into the folds of his own robes. It presses against the rough fabric, insistent and angry for desire to return to the wet heat of her mouth. He reaches down to haul Arya up from where she kneels and wraps a hand around her throat, the throat he very much wishes were still wrapped around his cock, and presses her into the wall by it, squeezing lightly in warning. Her fingers still work between her legs and he swats her arm away with the hand not holding her in place.

His tiny sister enters the training room, her eyes widening to see them. They must look a sight, the both of them panting heavily. Arya’s face is red, eyes watering, mouth still open as if in tribute. His cock twitches against the front of his robe and he hopes that his sister cannot see it.

“Brother,” his tiny sister greets warily. “All is well?”

He clears his throat and says, devoid of emotion, “Yes. A man and his apprentice practice strangulation.”

Arya barks out a hoarse laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey apparently we're taking prompts for #dickoff2019 'cause that sounds like fun. they might be filled, they might not, depending on time and/or inspiration, but feel free to leave one in the comments if you like and we'll see if they get the creative juices flowing. blanket statement: i don't do non-con or anything involving sexual use of poop.


	3. queensguard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _alternate universe: arya stark goes to the house of black and white to purchase a contract._  
T- to M-rating (depending on how you feel about adult language). themes of infidelity and spousal abuse. 2708 words.
> 
> a full description of this concept is in the ending notes, to avoid spoilers.

Arya wears bright clothes. Blues, oranges. The shades of nobility in Westeros where brighter silks and dyes are costly, but the upper class in Braavos tend towards more dark and severe garments. She’s been wearing the bleaker colors as she rubs elbows with the Sealord and his contingent and now she wears the brights to blend in with the peasants. It makes her feel as though she’s sticking out of the crowd even when she knows she’s not.

It’s important that she not be noticed, that she not be seen. Her window of opportunity is limited, and Syrio can only cover for her for so long. She’s been here for a week or so now and has been careful to watch the behavior of the Braavosi commoners, their mannerisms, how they dress and walk and speak to each other. She cannot be recognized. She  _ must _ blend. If the lack of interest on the part of the people she passes is any indication, she’s succeeding.

It is nerve-wracking, to weave between the throng of people as she walks through the market to reach her destination, and it is also… exhilarating. To wear a blouse and trousers instead of a dress, to wear boots instead of soft slippers, to have her hair pulled back into simple buns that don’t tug at her scalp rather than the elaborate updo of braids she barely tolerates back in King’s Landing. The boots are wearing blisters into her ankles, blood surely spotting on her socks, and it feels like  _ freedom. _

Jon is a shadow at her heels. He’s the only one who knows of her plan, aside from Syrio who can still claim plausible deniability. He thinks it’s a terrible idea, that she is not in any way thinking this through, but he’s a good brother and a good sworn sword so he follows her without complaint as they make their way from the Purple Harbor to the Isle of Gods. His sword is hidden, of course, to deter the aggressive  _ bravos _ from seeking action, and he carries her Needle with him as well since she is not allowed to carry it herself.

They charter a gondola to take them to the House of Black and White. When the rower hears of their destination he pales and tells Arya his name, his children’s names, his wife’s. He tells her his favorite foods and how old he is and his hobbies and chatters nervously the entire time. When the gondola stops, pulling into a small dock at the base of a rocky knoll upon which rests an austere building of grey stone with no windows and a black and white door, the rower gives her a carved wooden comb he’s fished from his pocket. Again he repeats his name and takes her hands, tells her, “You know me, and we are friends now, yes?  _ Valar dohaeris, _ and we are friends.” His hands are trembling in her own.

She and her brother exchange glances as the rower makes his leave. What madness is she attempting to seek audience with?

“Sister,” Jon murmurs when the gondola has gone and they stand at the steps of the House of Black and White. He cannot call her by her name, not now, not even when they are seemingly alone. No one can know who she is. He doesn’t ask if she’s sure, though he wants to. She’s glad he doesn’t ask. She’s not sure. It’s treason. It will upend her whole life, her family’s lives, the lives of everyone in the kingdom. Except…

Except then she thinks of Robert, drunk and stinking of wine. She thinks of him grunting above her like a hog, sweaty and red-faced with exertion and drink, pawing at her body roughly and slurring  _ Lyanna _ against her closed and unresponsive lips.

She thinks of him talking over her, telling her she's too young and stupid to go to Council and not allowing her to join when he and their men go hunting or hawking because  _ it’s not what women do. _ She thinks of how she has still not conceived an heir and his angry comments that she’s broken, and aren’t women supposed to be fertile when they’re young? She thinks of the bruises on her wrists and throat that her ladies slather concealing paste onto after Robert makes his husbandly calls to her chamber, oaths pressed from them not to tell her father or brother. She thinks of the bruises to her thighs and breasts that are not covered by makeup, but rather by dresses. She thinks of the way he looks at her afterwards; with regret, but not enough regret to stop.

She thinks of her father, torn between loyalty to his king and loyalty to his daughter, growing angrier and angrier by the day. She thinks of how when she’d last seen Robb, now Lord of Winterfell, he’d hugged her as a guise to whisper into her ear,  _ tell me and I will call my banners to come for you. _

Life will upend itself eventually anyway. Things cannot continue as they have.

She is not good at being selfless.

“Stay here,” she commands. Jon, a good sworn sword but a better brother, and a man who obeys his queen, frowns unhappily but stands at attention to wait. If she is to do this, she will include him in the treason as little as possible. If it fails and he is questioned afterwards, he can tell the truth: he obeyed his queen, and heard nothing of her plans. It is the least that she can do for him.

Arya marches up the steps to the House of Black and White.

It is dark inside the temple. Statues line the walls, depictions of the death gods of many cultures. A pool of water sits in the center, with two people kneeling by it, a woman like herself and a man in mottled priest’s robes. Arya hesitates at the vast doorway, watching; the doors close silently behind her, unprompted. After a moment the man takes a cup from the folds of his robes, dips it into the pool, and holds it out for the woman in offering. The woman takes it, cradles it in her hands for a long moment, and then drinks. The man touches her shoulder gently and then rises to his feet to approach Arya.

He’s handsome, beneath his hood. Younger than she’d expect of a priest, with striking features and white streaks through his red hair and brown eyes so bright they seem golden in the flickering shadows of torchlight. When he reaches her he tilts his head in question, gestures to the pool. She glances back at it to see the woman from before is laying limp on the pool’s steps instead of kneeling. Her chest does not rise with breath, and Arya feels a little thrill of fear, and wonder. “No, I--” she starts, then bites her lip. Arya tries to remember what Syrio had told her, the information delivered subtly and as veiled as possible. “ _ V-valar morghulis, _ ” she says finally, stuttering over the words.

The priest smiles, small and secretive. “ _ Valar dohaeris, _ ” he responds. His voice is deep, rumbling. If she did not know his true profession, she might even find it pleasing. “How can this man help a lovely girl?”

She has been drilled in diplomacy, foreign affairs. His accent and mannerisms place him as Lorathi, a culture known for equal courtesy, but at this point she knows how to recognize empty flattery and glares at him. She’s accustomed to the barbed compliments of the courts, the sweet simpering to belie the venom. She draws herself up, straightens her shoulders. “I have a name for your Order.”

His smile widens just a touch. “Of course. But, contracts come with a price. A girl knows this?”

“Name it,” she demands. “Name the price and I will pay.”

“The cost may be high,” the priest murmurs in warning.

“I will pay it,” she says again, firmer.

The priest looks her up and down. It would almost appear assessing, clinical, but for the small spark of heat in his golden eyes. Arya swallows, surprised, when those eyes linger on her mouth. Almost involuntarily she chews upon her lip again for the briefest moment before forcing herself to stop, and the priest's smile grows once more.

He steps forward, closer, and hums thoughtfully. “What name does a girl give a man? Whose death can be bought no matter the cost?”

She licks her lips. Steps forward as well, until the space between them in scant. The woman at the pool is supposedly dead and she can see no one else in the room, but she still does not trust the shadows at the corners. Obligingly the priest leans in so that she may speak into his ear; it must not be uncommon, for buyers to whisper the names of those they want killed. He smells of ginger and cloves, spicy and warm.

“Robert Baratheon,” she answers softly, and the priest suddenly stops and stills, the faintest hint of surprise on his expression before it is smothered. Arya Stark, Lady Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, whispers with a sense of calm she has not felt since before her betrothal, “I name my husband, King Robert Baratheon, First of His Name.”

After a moment the priest tilts his head once more, though his eyes unfocus slightly, as if he is not looking at her but rathering  _ listening _ to someone whispering in the distance. When he glances back at her it is with another smile. “The God tells this man His price,” he tells her.

Arya swallows, nervous and excited, scared and ecstatic. Freedom at the tips of her fingers for the first time in years. “What is it?”

Insouciant, he lifts a hand to tuck a lock of hair that had escaped a Braavosi-braided bun behind her ear. She has rarely been touched by a man but Robert or her father and brothers since she was a child, and never with such casual intimacy as this. He is, she thinks warily, quite handsome. When he answers there is mischief in his eyes, his voice a purr.

“What can be worth a king to Him but a queen?”

* * *

He leaves her in the House of Black and White with a kiss.

It is chaste, demure, the barest press of his lips to hers, and does not otherwise touch her. It is respectful of her position and gender, as respectful as such a gesture can be when she is a queen already married. “To seal the deal,” he murmurs; when she licks them afterwards, her own lips taste now like the spice he smells of. She cannot remember if she has ever shared a kiss which did not taste of either wine or duty. “Does the lovely queen have any specifications for this contract?”

She shakes her head. Her mind feels cloudy and warm, filled with cotton heated by the sun. Has he drugged her somehow? Jon should have come in with her. Privacy is less important between them than safety. But no-- she does not think it is a drug which slows her wits. It is a warmth in her belly, a want in her body that she has not ever felt before. The promise of freedom from her boorish husband, perhaps. Or, perhaps, simply because the priest is quite handsome. Possibly both.

“N-no,” she answers finally, finding her voice. She clears her throat to strengthen it and draws herself up to her full queenly height. “Whatever can be done that is… least intrusive. Politically.” The priest cocks his head at her thoughtfully, as if wondering a question he knows better than to ask. Arya does not explain; but, she wishes to kill her husband, and it is only poor fortune that her husband is also her king. If an end to her marital suffering can be brought that does not also throw the kingdom into massive upheaval, that would be the ideal. She bites her lip, and tastes him upon it again. “So, it is done? He will die?”

The priest nods. The subtly mischievous look which he’d worn throughout their interaction fades into something more serious, something darker. She suddenly has no difficulty believing this man’s true work. “A queen speaks the name, and death will come. On the morrow, at the turn of a moon, a year from this day, it will come. A man does not fly like a bird, but one foot moves and then another and one day a man is there, and a king dies.  _ Valar morghulis. _ ” He bows to her, a deep bend of his waist. “ _ Valar dohaeris. _ Go, lovely queen. A man plans his work.” Then he turns and begins to walk away.

“But you haven’t told me the true price,” she reminds him, confused, sure that his earlier statement was made in impish jest.

The priest looks at her over his shoulder and that warm, mischievous smile is back. “Does she think all contracts here are sealed with kisses?” he asks, voice mirthful, and  _ winks. _

“Bastard Lorathi,” she grumbles beneath her breath once he has gone, for a moment quite unqueenly, and then leaves the temple with haste. She feels as though she should be nervous, worried of the cost, regretful for her actions: when she pushes the temple doors open she instead feels half a girl again, carefree, and she takes a deep breath that releases from her unfettered by weight. There’s a warmth in her tummy born of that smile, that tease, that kiss which carried spice.

Jon is waiting at the bottom of the steps, hand upon the hilt of his sword. When he hears the doors open he whirls to look, and when he sees her his eyes widen in surprise. 

Belatedly, his knee trembles as if to bend into a kneel before he catches it and remains standing. It must pain him to not be able to use the courtesies with his queen that his honor demands him to. He’s still staring at her, as if unable to believe what he sees.

“Let’s go, brother,” she tells him, a lightness to her steps. “I want to go to the Moon Pool, see what all the fuss is about. Maybe we will see some  _ bravos _ duel!” They will have to walk from the Isle of Gods to find another gondola, but the weather is warm and it is one of the few days since she has come here that the city is not covered in a layer of fog. She is wearing boots --boots!-- and breeches -- _ breeches!! _ \-- and the day is young and she is not expected to be Queen Arya back at the Sealord’s palace for several hours yet. When Jon does not immediately fall into step behind her, she pauses and turns to glance at him. “What? What is it?”

He reaches out as if to touch her face but stills, always aware of his station: she is a queen and he may be her sworn sword but he is still just a bastard. Arya has never cared about that: she takes his hand and presses it to her cheek in permission. “You’re smiling,” he says, almost accusingly, almost wondrously.

She thinks of brown-gold eyes and a wicked smirk, the sweetest kiss she has ever received-- she thinks of her husband’s dead body cooling on the ground and how afterwards she will never be expected to touch it again. She is barren, she is sure of it: years of coupling with a man who’s produced a score of bastards, but his seed has never taken root. She’ll never marry again, for no one will want her, and she  _ rejoices. _ Let Stannis have the throne, or Renly, or one of any of the children Robert has made outside their marriage bed-- hell, let old one-eared black Balerion wear the crown. The tomcat would do a better job than the current king. It matters not to her.

When Robert is dead and she is no longer Queen, she will be free. She can go  _ home. _

She smiles wider. “I am,” she confirms, and dour, sullen, perpetually unhappy Jon smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> concept: jon arryn manages to relay his suspicions of lannister twincest to robert before dying. robert disowns "his" children. joffrey is sent to take the black, myrcella is sent to the silent sisters, tommen is sent to ward indefinitely at casterly rock. jaime is publicly executed; cersei is privately executed. left wifeless, heirless, and handless, robert travels north to ask ned to be his hand-- and finds arya, spitting image of the dead love of his life, and decides she'll be his new wife. ned is dismayed but unable to deny his king. arya travels south with him. the war of five kings never happens. robert and arya are wed after she has flowered. several years later, amid rising tensions over the fact that an heir has still not been conceived and suspicions of unkind treatment of the queen, arya travels to braavos to spend some time with her childhood dancing master, syrio. not all of her time in braavos is accounted for.
> 
> i'd originally planned to make this a full fic but honestly the concept, while interesting, has too many plot holes that would need to be filled to work in any serious capacity, and i just lack the motivation for it. so instead we get a meet-cute but, like, with husband murder.
> 
> might write more in this universe and just add it to this collection. who knooooows!!


	4. frey pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A girl and a man try their hand at baking._  
T- to M-rating. warnings for casual discussion of murder/cannibalism. some sociopaths in love. 1,419 words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer: i know fuck-all about baking. ive just been bingeing gbbo while playing video games and avoiding writing like the plague
> 
> this is not, unfortunately, the dumbest thing ive ever written but boy howdy it probably comes close

In the kitchens of the Twins, a man and a girl work together to bake a pie. This task does not traditionally require two people to complete, but she’d been at it for several hours and the man got bored of watching the girl play with her food.

“The bottom is soggy again,” she laments, turning the most recently-baked pie on its side and poking at the bottom. It is indeed soggy; bits of too-moist crust crumble away as she scrapes at it with a fingernail. “He won’t want to take a bite of it if it just falls apart on the fork.” She huffs a breath before tossing the pie out a window. Several seconds later there is a splash as it hits the water below. Fortunately, the kitchen is inexplicably an exterior-facing one. “For all his nattering I had to endure when we traveled together,  _ somehow _ Hot Pie never mentioned how to prevent soggy bottoms.”

It is their third pie today, and they are beginning to run low on some of their more… specialized ingredients.

Lothar is, or rather  _ was, _ a rather stringy man.

The man hums thoughtfully. He makes to run his hand through his hair but realizes just in time that it is still covered in chunks of bloodied flour and stalls the movement with a grimace, instead wiping them down on his apron. Currently he is portly, with greasy pox-scarred skin, to better fit into the staff in the Twin’s employ, but even still some habits of good hygiene are difficult to repress. “The meat is too fatty, the juices collect at the bottom as it bakes.”

“I  _ know, _ ” the girl whines, because she does; he’d told her that on the last pie, too. “So let’s just do a fry-up to cook the meat through and then add it to the dough for baking!”

He gives her a  _ look. _ She knows his opinion on this: it will not taste as good if it’s not baked in with the juice of the vegetables and seasonings.  _ It’s a delicate balance of ingredients, _ he’d said when she’d first suggested cooking the meat separately.  _ If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right. _

The man chooses weird things to be a perfectionist about.

“What if we cut smaller pieces of meat?” he suggests. She misses his weird Lorathi speech patterns, but the face he’s wearing doesn’t use them and he is stupidly devoted to character acting even when it’s just the two of them. She thinks, not necessarily kindly, that he’d be a fabulous mummer if he ever took to the stage. “Pieces less fatty?”

“I want it to be chunky,” she argues, crossing her arms petulantly. “I want him to have eaten big huge bites before he realizes.”

“Vicious girl,” he sighs, but it comes out sounding more appreciative than he’d have liked for it to. “How much of the belly do we have left?”

She turns to the other table, the one that they have not commandeered for making the dough for the crust or chopping vegetables; the torso of Black Walder lays across it, his chest cracked open like a walnut and his tummy torn to shreds. Most of Lothar they’d already gone through to make the previous pies-- what remains of that corpse was also pitched out the window, for lack of anything better to do with it. Personally, he thinks she just likes throwing things out of windows. She pokes around the body.

This whole  _ baking _ thing is more complicated than a girl had thought it’d be. So much of the body is unusable. At first she’d wanted to just bake the heart into the pie, just have the whole heart right in the middle, but he’d said it would just lose its shape in the oven and the size of it would make it difficult to cook through. He always makes things harder than they need to be. It doesn’t  _ have _ to be  _ pretty, _ it just needs to  _ work. _

“Not much,” she answers after a moment. “Why do Freys have to be so thin and skinny?”

Wisely, he chooses not to point out her own diminutive stature. “There was a fat one, I recall. The maids in the keep have mentioned her-- Walda.”

“She wasn’t involved in the Wedding though. And I'm pretty sure she's already dead.” She turns to look at him over her shoulder and narrows her eyes. “Been talking to many maids here, have you?” Right now he is portly and pox-scarred, perhaps, but still handsome, if you tilt your head and squint. They’ve been at the Twins for the better part of a week, listening to rumors, collecting names-- a girl wants to make sure all the guests of honor to her uncle’s wedding are rewarded for their loyalty. Long enough for him to  _ woo _ some of the help, certainly.

He smiles at her winningly. “A few,” he says, and chuckles when her face pulls into a scowl. Because he is a character actor he crosses the distance between them and kisses her forehead and clarifies, “But there’s only one I’m actually interested in.”

She reaches up and wraps a hand around his throat; the grip is gentle, meant to keep him in place, and smears blood against his skin. He can’t find it within himself to care. “Not a maid for long though,” she says, a promise and a threat. “Right?”

“Once a few more names are crossed off,” he assures her. Until a man and a girl have dealt with a queen, distraction is something neither of them can afford. Then he leans over her to look at the torso on the table and winces. “I think we might have used all the viable stomach meat. I don’t exactly have experience in carving up humans, beyond the faces. Did you  _ really _ have to cut the legs off? Some thigh might have done well.”

“I couldn’t fit them in the cart, the legs kept dangling around,” she says defensively. “And  _ you _ weren’t around to help me carry them!”

A man sighs. He wasn’t around because he was busy making up reasons why the normal cooks couldn’t be in the kitchens that day, but  _ of course _ it’s his fault… so  _ of course _ her go-to answer to the problem of body transportation is dismemberment. For such a lovely girl, she sure does go out of her way to make things harder than they need to be.

She turns to face the body on the table as well and leans against him, her back against his warm front. Portly and pox-scarred but still  _ him, _ still a man. When she tilts her head back to look up at him, he bends to kiss her. His lips are paler and thinner than she's used to, but he tastes of ginger nonetheless.

He'd put bloody ginger in the dough. Said it would  _ add some heat. _ Like they're baking for someone important.

"Out of usable meat," a girl hums when he has pulled away.

"We could just go with the one before the soggy bottom," he suggests placatingly. “It’s not like he’s a man of very refined taste.” When they turn to look at the said pie, previously rejected on the grounds that it had not browned enough on top, both frown in annoyance to see that the rise of the pie's top layer has collapsed in on itself. "That shouldn't have happened," he says with a barely-there pout.

A girl bites her lip to hide a smirk. A man does not like to be bad at anything, apparently not even baking. "Hmm. The eyeballs, maybe? Not chunky but definitely recognizable."

"They would pop in the heat of the oven," he argues, shaking his head. "The liquid would get all over the vegetables. The crust would be the definition of soggy."

A thoughtful silence before a delightful idea comes to her. "Fingers?" she suggests, tilting her head back to glance up at him once more. "He cuts a slice, finds a fingernail. Not fatty enough make juice, put it them on the bottom layer to separate the crust from the vegetables?"

A man considers it. It could do. And if they don't get it right the first time, then they've got ten to work with. Twenty, if they’re willing to go fish Lothar out of the river below. He wouldn’t put it past her. Once she latches onto an idea she sinks her little teeth into it as stubbornly as a hound.

He kisses her again and says, "I'll get the cleaver."


	5. roadhead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They’re in the Westerlands, somewhere on the River Road between Ashemark and Golden Tooth, and she wants to suck his cock._  
explicit rating. potential underage warning (see notes). 3957 words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is for HSF specifically, because i promised you sunglasses porn like a month ago and never delivered. hopefully this 3.8k of pure and unadulterated sin lives up to your expectations :V
> 
> this takes place in the same universe as my other fic, [sentimentality, and where it gets you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19716025/chapters/46659832), though it is not strictly speaking required for you to read _sentimentality_ to understand this particular piece. for readers familiar with that fic, this is a semi-prequel.
> 
> a TL;DR summary of _sentimentality_ is that it's a modern day/zombie apocalypse setting, wherein wights are literal zombies. jaqen and arya are survivors who met (essentially) how they did in canon, but did not separate and try to survive together in the zombified future. jaqen has some pretty gnarly sociopathic tendencies but he keeps them on the down-low. also they fuck. a lot.
> 
> **underage warning:** for the purposes of this fic, arya's age is ambiguous. if read within the full context of _sentimentality_, arya is also ambiguously aged, but is _heavily implied_ to be in her midteens. _this is skeevy and really gross._ i reiterate that jaqen in this setting has sociopathic tendencies. again, the age is ambiguous and never outright stated, but read with caution.

They’re in the Westerlands, somewhere on the River Road between Ashemark and Golden Tooth, and she wants to suck his cock.

He’s wearing sunglasses. That kind with the thin frames and the huge lenses that hipsters and policemen used to wear. Aviators, she thinks. The trees on either side of the road pass by in the reflection of the dark tint of the glass. There’s a little speck of blood at the bottom inside corner of the left lense. She doesn’t know how it doesn’t bother him. Maybe he hasn’t noticed.

She’s been wanting to suck his cock for a while. Since this morning. Since she woke up. Haven’t had time. There’s been a group of scavs on their ass since they got too close to the Rock a few days ago. He’s been keeping them on the move pretty much constantly to try to lose the tail. He drives for a shift while she sleeps in the passenger seat, then when he’s tired they switch and she drives while he sleeps. Rinse and repeat. They haven’t exchanged more than a handful of words in the last week. It’s fine. That’s just how they are. They don’t really need to talk to understand each other.

It’s his shift which means she should be sleeping, but she’s not. She was. She wants to be good. To be safe. It’s not like she’s  _ trying _ to slack. She knows they’re still in danger. She knows she needs to rest so she’s got her wits. But she was thinking about it when she was driving earlier, and then when it was his turn to drive she dreamed of warmth and skin and woke up with a hot wet cunt and a watering mouth and now she’s not asleep anymore. Now she wants to suck his cock.

He knows she’s awake. She doesn’t snore like he does but he’s as aware of her body as she is of his. Not necessarily in a sex way either. Just because they’ve been together for a while. He knows the sounds it makes. The shapes it takes. She likes to curl on her side towards the window when she sleeps in the car. If she’s facing him then he knows that means she’s awake. He doesn’t say anything. She’s not surprised. He usually doesn’t if he doesn’t have to.

He looks good in the sunglasses. Powerful, sort of. The way movie stars looked when they played characters that were powerful. He looks like that but authentic. His expression is neutral, not worried. They’ve been chased around for the better part of a week but he doesn’t seem stressed about it. The shape of his lips turn up into a natural smile at the corners even when he’s not particularly happy and with the sunglasses on she can’t tell if his brows are furrowed, if his eyes glance too often with suspicion towards the rear view mirror. He seems calm. Cool. Collected. In control. She likes that he’s in control. It’s a constant in her life. One of the few. She doesn’t have to worry either, when he’s in control.

Gods she wants to suck his cock.

They haven’t been sleeping together long. Long enough that she’s familiar with the sensations of sex but recently enough that it still feels like a triumph. A month, maybe. The days blend together. They always have, but now she’s got new things to mark them by. Different kinds of kisses. Different kinds of fucks. Nine days ago she rode him backwards for the first time. Two days before that he stuck his fingers in her ass for the first time. Six days before that he came inside her for the first time. New milestones. A carnal calendar and the dates are annotated with debauchery. She still likes touching him. She still likes when he touches her. It hasn’t gotten old yet. Maybe it never will.

She’s sucked him off already, a few times. She likes the feel of him on her tongue, the weight. The way his cock throbs against her lips. The taste is less than ideal but it’s not blood or wightrot so it could be a lot worse. She likes how his hips shift towards her, how his fingers card through her hair and pull just slightly. She likes how he moans when she sucks the head, when she swallows around it. They’ve fucked a good dozen times by now but even when his balls are twitching against her dripping cunny as he pumps her full of come he doesn’t moan the way he does when he spills into her mouth. He gets  _ loud _ and she likes it. It makes  _ her _ feel powerful. In control, too. She likes that almost more than she likes  _ him _ being in control.

He looks picturesque in the sunglasses. Not like he’s speeding them down an abandoned highway to outrun some Lannister assholes who want to turn them into wight-food. He could be any hot guy. The kind of hot guy that she might pass on the street and send a second glance, if the world hadn’t gone to shit. The kind of hot guy that she might peek at between her eyelashes if she saw him on the bus, or at a restaurant. He could be anybody. They could be driving anywhere. Somewhere where there aren’t other scavs, where there aren’t wights. Somewhere safe. Maybe somewhere across the Narrow Sea, to wherever his dumb little pips go when he does his clicks on the radio. Maybe he’ll take her there someday. He’s not sentimental but she’s useful. He’ll keep her, if she’s useful.

Her mouth is watering again. Fuck that’s weird. Is that normal? She doesn’t know. She wasn’t really interested in sex back when she had the resources available to actually learn about it. The mechanics, sure. Insert tab A into slot B. She gets that. She’s good at that at this point, she thinks. And he’s teaching her what she doesn’t already know. But the social aspect? Is it normal to want the things that she wants? Should she  _ want _ to suck him off? Should  _ she _ get the enjoyment out of it that she does? That part she’s not so sure about. What’s typical and what’s not. Puberty in the wight apocalypse has been a wild ride.

She doesn’t know how he knows what she’s thinking. Maybe her breathing changes. Maybe she licks her lips one too many times, or swallows too heavily. Maybe her eyes look different, bigger or darker or wider or whatever. She doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. When she finally reaches out and puts a hand on his thigh he doesn’t jump, his muscles don’t startle with surprise. He doesn’t react much at all, even when her hand begins to move. The denim of his jeans is rough against her fingers as she runs them up and down the inside of his thigh. Lightly at first. Harder once she realizes he’s not going to chastise her.

When her palm meets the crotch of his pants he’s still soft, not yet firmed from the attention. Sometimes he gets hard right away and sometimes it takes a while. She hasn’t yet determined if there’s a rhyme or reason to that. She thinks that maybe cocks are just sort of weird. Her cunt is so much easier. More straightforward. When she’s horny it’s wet and when she’s not it’s dry, and when she starts getting horny it gets wet pretty much right away.

Maybe that’s not normal either? Maybe she gets wet too easy. Maybe she’s a slut, the kind of woman her mother would call  _ wanton _ and eye derisively. She doesn’t get that. Why is feeling good a bad thing? Isn’t feeling good during sex better than not feeling good during sex? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe she’s different and wrong because of it.

He likes it though. He likes the way it sounds when she’s soaked and he’s pounding into her, the moist slap of his skin to hers, the obscene noise it makes when air gets caught between them. He likes to shove his fingers inside her and collect the wetness and make her lick it off. She doesn’t necessarily like the taste but she doesn’t hate it either, and she  _ does _ like the look in his eyes when he watches her suck the cuntslick off his knuckles.

She wonders if he’s got that look in his eyes right now. She wouldn’t be able to see if he does. The shades are too dark. He’s probably not even looking at her. He’s too safe, too practical. He probably hasn’t taken his eyes off the road. He probably hasn’t looked at her once. She squeezes her hand lightly. He’s starting to get hard. She can trace part of the shape of him through his jeans.

She doesn’t ask if this is okay. They don’t really do that. They both just run under the assumption that the other will say  _ stop _ if they need to stop. The first night they’d fucked he asked  _ are you sure, _ but he hasn’t asked since then. He just does things. Usually she likes those things. Sometimes she doesn’t, but not enough to make him stop. The closest she’s gotten so far is when he put his fingers in her ass. She said, “Wait,” and he waited. He didn’t pull them out but he didn’t move either. He just waited, like she’d asked. She wasn’t sure if she was okay with it. The way it felt having her ass stretched, the burn, the sting. It was weird and uncomfortable. But she also wasn’t sure that she  _ wasn’t _ okay with it. It hurt, but sometimes she likes hurts. She had to think about whether or not it was a kind of hurt that she likes. He waited until she decided, and then she said, “Okay,” and he kept going. And after a bit it stopped hurting. And then it stopped feeling uncomfortable. And then it started feeling  _ nice. _

She likes that he waited when she asked him to. If she had said  _ stop _ she thinks he would have stopped. So, like. There’s that at least.

Another mile passes before he’s hard enough for her to feel the whole length of him against the fabric. Another before she unbuttons the jeans. Pulls down the zipper. He doesn’t seem to approve or disapprove, doesn’t say  _ yes _ or  _ no _ or turn to face her or push her away. But he does shift backwards into his seat more. Gives the barest tilt of his hips. Reaches out and rests the hand not on the wheel against the shoulder of her own seat, opens the side of his body up to her. Gives her room to move. By now she knows permission when she sees it.

When she pulls his cock out and holds it in her hand it’s firm but not fully filled out. She knows because when she wraps her fingers around it she can can touch the tip of her thumb to one of her knuckles. When he’s completely hard he’s thick enough that her fingers don’t meet. It makes her twat hurt when he fucks her, but it’s okay. That is  _ definitely _ a hurt that she likes.

She gives it a tug. Gentle, but with a firm grip. That first night he’d showed her how to hold it, how to turn her wrist at the base and the head. He’d spit down where her fingers made a hole for him to fuck into and snorted a laugh at her yelp of disgust. She likes holding his cock. It’s hard, hot. She likes the size and she likes knowing that she can take it in her cunt. She leans over the middle console of the car to watch the motions that her hand makes. Up, down. Up, down. A little twist that makes the foreskin roll. His hips twitch. It feels heady. Powerful. Power, in her hand.

There are mile markers on the side of the highway. Rusted. The metal doesn’t really fade in color, doesn’t bleach in the sun the way wood does, but it’s dusty and coated with pollen. The colors of the markers are red and golden, Lannister colors, harken back to before the world had gone to shit and things like money and names mattered. The numbers are still legible. She doesn’t give a fuck about distance but she likes to count them. See how long it takes for him to fall apart. How far they can go before he’s too far gone.

A few miles after she pulls his cock out of his pants he’s started dripping precome. It collects between her fingers tackily, sticky. She doesn’t lick it off, not yet. She knows it’ll be salty when she does. Bitter. She doesn’t particularly enjoy his come but she likes to lick it up anyway. Mostly because she likes to watch him while she does it. The way his pupils dilate and contract like some kind of predator as they sweep from her tongue to her lips to her eyes and back down, like he doesn’t quite know where to look.

She wants to kiss his neck but she thinks that might be pushing it. He can only handle so many distractions, and they  _ are _ going quite fast. Besides, she’s not sure she could reach his face without bracing herself to lean over, and the only thing she has to brace against is the wheel. No, she can’t kiss his neck, even if that spot where his jaw meets the side of his chin is one of her favorite places to cozy up into to mouth at. She’ll have to settle for something else.

She eyes his cock, thick, leaking at the head. Licks her lips. Yeah. Settling. What a pity.

He tenses when she unbuckles her seat belt. Sense must be taking over, how unsafe it is must be bothering him. Clearly, he needs a distraction. Before he can open his mouth to tell her to sit back up straight she’s bent, twisting in her seat, knees pulled up so she can lean. She keeps her grip on his cock as she eases her front half over the middle console, smiles to herself at his grunt of surprise when she takes the head of his cock into her mouth. She sucks, sharp and hard, gets a wad of pre on her tongue. His breath releases in a stutter when she swallows it down.

After a moment, and likely against his better judgement, he leans back further in his seat. Increases the space between himself and the steering wheel to give her more room. Sighs when she takes advantage of the movements to lick her way down to the base, to nose at where his balls poke out just barely from the hole in his briefs she’d pulled his dick out through. His hand is still pressed against the back of her own seat. She wonders how long it’ll take before he’s pulling her hair.

She makes herself comfortable in his lap, as comfortable as she can be while stretched over the middle console. His cock tastes like sweat and baby wipes. It is at once familiar and still a heady thrill. She kisses it. Once, twice, three times. Each kiss is placed a little higher than the last until she’s back at the head instead of the base. The fourth kiss is open mouthed. She’s careful not to scrape her teeth against him too hard. She learned not to do that the hard way. Her tongue runs over the smooth and spongy head, grabs more pre as it drips. Saliva smears across her lips. Her licks turn tiny, kittenish. Teasing. She likes the weight against the flat of her tongue and the texture against the tip of it.

“Lovely girl,” he growls, the first thing he’s said to her all day. She kisses the head again, adjusts how she’s folded herself over him to start jerking him off again. When she glances up at him she can see beneath the lenses of the sunglasses. He’s not looking at her. His eyes are staring straight ahead, out the window to the road beyond. She turns her kissing to the dripping hole at the crown of his cock, touches her tongue to it. Bathes it in those little quick licks.

He still doesn’t take his eyes off the road, but his hand drops down from the back of her seat to dig his fingers into her scalp. She almost wants to sit up, to check the mile marker. To see how long that lasted. She doesn’t. Not only does she not want to give up her prize, but he’s holding her in place. His grip in her hair is firm, just shy of painful. He gives a little tug, pulling her impossibly closer. She likes it, this kind of pain. She wraps her lips around the head, takes it into her mouth. Feels it poke against the roof of her palate and moans. He moans too.

She wonders how long she could draw this out, if they had the time. Not while they were driving. Just in general. His cock in her mouth. How many times could she bring him to the edge. How much spunk she could get out of him before she sucked him dry. They’ll never have the time to devote to finding out. They’ll never be safe enough to see. It makes her sad, in a perverse way. She should want for better things than that, than some peace to see how long she can suck him off. But she doesn’t.

He pushes her head down, further into his lap. His cock slips past her tongue, down into her throat.

She’s not… great at this yet. She’s practicing. She likes to practice it and he likes to help her. She can take him a little further each time, if she’s prepared for it. He says with enough time and practice she could probably take him all the way to the base. She doesn’t know how. She thinks he’s too thick, that it’d choke her. Intellectually she knows it’s mostly just controlling the gag reflex, breathing through the nose. She wants to be able to swallow him down. She wants to feel that powerful.

Right now though, she’s not prepared for it. The head of his cock taps the back of her throat and she gags, coughing, her muscles contracting with violent surprise. It squeezes the part of his length she’d managed to take and he groans, low and rumbling, and thrusts forward, forcing more in. Thrice he does this, driving his crotch further against her, working himself in deeper, deeper than she’s ever taken him in her throat before. What does it feel like? Is it that good? The car jolts forward as his foot briefly puts more pressure on the pedal before he abruptly returns his attention to the road. The hand in her hair leaves it to join his other one on the steering wheel but his breathing is harsh and betrays his otherwise calm demeanor. Beneath the shades of his aviator sunglasses his eyes blink rapidly, thrice in quick succession. He’s not in control. Not anymore. It’s as good as when he is.

She pants wetly against his cock, trying to catch her breath. When she licks her lips, a reflex, it runs serendipitously over a vein just below her mouth The vein throbs and she cannot help kissing it even as the muscles of her throat spasm in remembered protest. She coughs twice, as subtly into his thigh as she can, before going back for more. This time she is prepared for the invasive feeling as she swallows him down, her throat fluttering nervously around him. Judging by the moan and how his hands tighten against the steering wheel in an audible creak, he is less prepared.

This time she takes him slowly, cautiously. She gives herself time to get used to the feeling, the thickness. The heat. He does not thrust into her again, lets her take him at her own pace. She still cannot reach the base of him, but she’s able to get as much in voluntarily as he’d forced in a minute ago, and she breathes hard through her nose, feels the air travel in the scant space between her throat and his cock. The air she breathes, when she’s able to breathe it, tastes like his come. She feels pre dripping down into her throat and when she swallows it he groans again.

She works herself up, down. Up, down. The motion with her mouth that she’d made earlier with her hands. She’s braced against his thighs and she feels the muscles of them beneath her fingers. They’re trembling with effort, but when she looks up through watering eyes to his face his expression is calm once more. She watches him. Watches his lips part minutely, the ways his brows shift. When his eyes blink. His nostrils flare when he breathes. His expression is calm but his breathing comes in heaves.

His eyes cut down to hers. She sees it, from her angle looking up under the shades. He holds her gaze for probably too long, considering how fast they’re going. She looks into his eyes and swallows around his cock. It pulses, thickens. That vein twitches once more. He sighs a moan with he comes into her throat. She pulls back after the first spurt, coughing as she does, wincing painfully as some is forced into her sinuses by the pressure of the cough.  _ That _ is certainly a new and unwelcome sensation. She’ll focus on it later. Right now she moves until the head of his cock rests against her open lips, angles her head so he can see the vicious white mess of his come dripping from the corners of her mouth, sliding down the back of her tongue and into her throat where his prick had just been gloved. They’ve only been fucking for like a month but she’s already figured out how much he likes looking at his spunk on her. He never seems particularly interested in her tits until he’s ready to come on them. Maybe once they’ve gotten a bit bigger. If they ever do.

Behind the shades, his eyes flick from her face to the road, as often as he safely can. She swallows, and so does he.

Her back hurts from leaning over. She sits upright in her seat once more. Unbuttons her own pants, tugs them down. Sucks on her fingers to get them wet and pulls them out sticky and shining to shove two of them up her cunt. She didn’t need to get them wet since she’s soaked through her panties, but part of her likes the disgusting possibility that they may have had some of his come on them. She fingers herself hard, fast, violently. It’s noisy from how slick she is. Her clit is throbbing and almost stiff beneath her thumb. It takes an embarrassingly small amount of time to come, and she does with a keening whine. If he’s watching the show then she can’t tell behind the shades.

She catches her breath, does her pants back up. Buckles her seatbelt again and leans her head against the window. It feels delightfully cool beneath her heated, sweaty skin. She feels warm and sated and full. Neither of them say anything else. She’ll have to take the driving shift in a few hours, but it’s alright. They’re leaving Lannister lands and they have nowhere to be.

This time, sleep comes easy.


	6. the maester

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _there is a maester who joins the crew on their voyage west._  
explicit rating. no additional warnings apply. arya/gendry is mentioned but not focused on. 4,867 words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been going through my WIP folder and finishing some things that have been laying around for a while. this is one of the first concepts of a drabble that i had for #dickoff2019, but got frustrated with my own inability to write something less than 1k and left it to rot for a while. since starting it a few months ago, i've seen a couple different (really awesome!!) interpretations of _jaqen sneaks onto arya's voyage_ and wanted to finally polish this up and throw my hat into the ring :B

Arya keeps to herself on the ship.

She works the sails, the rigging, climbs the ropes and the crowsnest just like any other member of the crew. She talks rarely. She listens closely when the Captain gives her instruction or correction for maintenance, whenever the deckhands chat. She lacks the grace upon the deck that the Ironborn have, but that can come in time and she doesn’t make sick when the water becomes choppy, which she knows is better than what some of the crew expected of her. When she’s not working she stares out at the horizon, any horizon; she’s not picky about which direction she faces. The Western skies spread out before her, the eternal promise of freedom; the Eastern winds bring the smell of snow and home and make a longing swell in her heart.

Sometimes she misses her brothers, her sister. The cold of frost, the way her breath was visible in her air. Winterfell was musty and old and ghosts clung to the stones but it was hers when she was someone else. She’s not that person anymore.

She could turn around if she wanted to, but she doesn’t so she won’t.

* * *

“Pasty Maester Pate has a crush on the princess,” Gyles laughs as she leaves the mess, and she pretends not to hear. Gyles is one of the deckhands, an Ironborn. Most of the deckhands are Ironborn. They’re the most experienced and the most reckless sailors, and she'd needed experienced and reckless. When she glances back over her shoulder the men at the table are smacking Pasty Maester Pate’s back jovially while he flushes into his drink.

The ship has two Pates. Black Pate, named because what teeth he was left are as black as his hair, and Pasty Maester Pate because he’s pale and doughy and was training to be a maester. (The crew is not especially clever when it comes to bestowing nicknames.) He never earned a chain but he was the only person from the Citadel interested in joining what the Archmaester called “suicide under the guise of expedition”. His neck is naked of metal but he has a surprising array of knowledge, from healing to navigation to poison; he was a risky applicant, and one they had to consider carefully in favor of more experienced sailors given that the ship can only hold so many warm bodies, but she and the Captain had both agreed they needed a maester and he was their option.

Pasty Maester Pate likes to watch her whenever she’s near. It’s not threatening. She knows how to identify threats. Pasty Maester Pate stutters out greetings and blushes when they make eye contact. He drops books and scrolls when she passes by. It’s annoying, but not threatening. It doesn’t affect his work. When Marqis throws his shoulder in the rigging a month out Pasty Maester Pate sets it expertly while Arya and Norren hold Marqis still. He's quick and efficient even as Marqis screams like he's dying, just calmly tells Arya to hold him down tighter and only starts stuttering at her once they’re done.

It’s not a problem yet, but it could be. She talks with the Captain about it. The Captain tells her to stop being so pretty if she doesn't want attention and she punches him in the stomach and then once he’s done coughing they both drink some rum. She likes the Captain even if he used to be a Reaver.

* * *

Sometimes she has nightmares. The dead, the dragons, escaping the city. Lots of reasons for nightmares.

She used to have them about her father’s death. The sound of the sword, the cheering of the crowd. It was hot that day, bloody hot. Her skin had itched from sweat and the little hairs that stuck to her neck and shoulders when Yoren had chopped at her braids. She used to dream of those things. She used to dream of leaping forward, taking her Needle and killing them, all of them, every godsdamned person in the crowd, and saving Father. She used to wake up from those dreams crying.

She doesn’t as much anymore. Those dreams happen far less often and hurt far less when she does have them. Like she’s moving past it. Like she’s forgetting. Like it was in another life and she’s not that girl anymore.

It was in another life. She isn’t that girl anymore. Sometimes she misses that girl. Sometimes she wonders who that girl could have become.

Now she dreams of dragonfire, the stench of wightrot. She dreams of running down endless dark corridors as the dead chase her, hissing and gurgling. She dreams of choking on ash that falls from the sky like rain, or snow, the crumbling of stone buildings and the scream of the wind as the dragon flew overhead. She dreams, and she wakes sweating, her heart racing.

She does not cry anymore when she wakes because she's getting used to them, but she is not entirely sure that’s a  _ good _ thing.

When she has nightmares she goes above deck and stares out at the horizon. She listens to the waves lapping against the hull, smells the salt. She’s left bits and pieces of herself in every place she’s been to; her innocence in King’s Landing, her courage in Harrenhal, her heart in Braavos. Sometimes it feels like she left the last of herself in Winterfell and all that’s left inside her is emptiness. Sometimes she feels hollow. Sometimes she feels like no one.

She lets the sea fill her after the nightmares.

* * *

“I could give you a book,” Pasty Maester Pate says, fiddling with his hands nervously. Arya raises an eyebrow and sips from her drink. They’re at mess and he’s wandered over to her, his eyes pointed down. “I’ve seen you pacing about the deck at night. Maybe a book would help you sleep.”

Her eyebrow ticks up higher. “You watch me on the deck?”

Pasty Maester Pate blushes and stutters and hurries away.

That night she wakes from a nightmare of dead hands grasping at her clothes and the sick stink of rot and when she leaves her cabin to pace the deck there’s a book wrapped in sealskin leather outside her door. A collection of Essosi herbs and the poisons and medicines that can be made from them. The leather smells like spice. She takes the book and goes back into her room. Reads it in bed, starts at the beginning and goes until the droll lists put her to sleep. The smell of the leather fills her dreams. Warmth and spice, familiar.

She sleeps better that night.

Bloody maester.

* * *

“Thanks,” she tells Pasty Maester Pate a week later, when she’s finished the book and handed it back. He’s still as pasty as ever even though they’re all tanning beneath the sun, herself included. All but him. Pasty Maester Pate. Like the sun doesn't touch him. Like his skin can't be stained.

His smile is crooked.

Something inside her, something dark and dangerous that’s shaped like a wolf, something she’s learned to recognize as  _ instinct, _ cocks its head in thoughtful consideration.

She pays attention, after that.

* * *

It’s difficult not to overhear scuttlebutt.

“So why’d you join up?” Victor asks.

“You know, same story as any other man here, I suppose,” Pasty Maester Pate says. “Had a girl. Smart as a whip with a smile like a knife--”

“Yeah, but her tits though, what were those like?” Norren interrupts, and the men laugh while Pasty Maester Pate stutters. They stop laughing when Arya clears her throat pointedly.

After a moment Pasty Maester Pate continues, his voice dreamy. “She was lovely. All of her, just the loveliest, from tip to toe. Such a lovely girl.”

There’s a certain way he says it, an inflection to the words that sends chills up her spine. Arya turns to look at him, eyes narrowed; Pasty Maester Pate is looking up at the roof of the mess with a lovelorn expression, stupid affection naked on his face. She blinks twice and shakes her head.

“What happened to her?” Duncan asks. Duncan is a bit of a romantic.

“She left me,” Pasty Maester Pate sighs glumly. “I guess she had better prospects back home. The people I worked with, they didn’t really like how close I’d been to her. Got in a bit of trouble. There wasn’t much reason to stick around after she left.”

“Shit,” Marqis says sympathetically. "Always thought it was cruel, making it so you maesters couldn't have a girl."

Pasty Maester Pate shrugs. “As long as she’s happy, I suppose. Besides, the princess needed a maester. Never earned my chain, but I figured I could help.”

The conversation turns to sexual conquests, the women the crew left behind, boasts and jeers to try to cheer Pasty Maester Pate up. He tolerates them with a bashful smile and meets her eyes only once before turning away, mortified. Eventually Marqis calls out, “Did you leave someone back home, Princess?”

They’re informal. The crew talks to her about anything, everything. She's included, in the trenches and not above them. They'll all die together on this ship, probably. Who cares about formalities at this point.

Arya likes it, usually. She hums thoughtfully and considers the question, and the men all lean in, eager for gossip about their esteemed princess.

She thinks of Winterfell and Gendry, of a forge, the smell of sweat and metal. She liked Gendry but she didn’t love him and she didn’t leave him behind because she was never his in the first place. She's never wanted to be  _ kept. _ You can't collar a wolf-- not without getting some fingers bitten off.

But… Braavos, the taste of ginger, hot on her tongue, kisses traded in darkened corners, quickly so they wouldn’t get caught. Promises whispered into her ear; promises broken when the Waif came for her. When she’d boarded the ship back to Westeros the Braavosi air had smelled of spice and blood and her heart had felt equal parts freedom and loss. Gendry is the only man she’s laid with, but only because someone else wouldn’t do it first.

She looks over at them, stares until Pasty Maester Pate looks up and she catches his eye. “No one,” she says finally, and her voice is flat. Pasty Maester Pate’s expression is dim, glassy with lack of recognition, as pasty as ever; he blushes when he realizes she’s staring and she sighs and turns away.

* * *

That night she dreams of skin tanned to bronze and eyes like molten fire, of kisses that taste like ginger and the scent of cloves in the air. She dreams of calloused fingers slipping between her lips, her wet folds. She dreams of a rumbling purr that ignites her blood and wakes to find that she is touching herself.

She tries not to think of him, usually.

One of very few indulgences to her station of birth: she has a cabin to herself. Still, she is not given the urge to pleasure herself often. She knows the crew does it in their bunks and pretends not to hear each other. She wonders, if he's here, if he's snuck on, if he’s him, if Pasty Maester Pate would risk the ridicule of touching himself to thoughts of her. She wonders what his kisses would taste like, what spice his lips would carry.

Finding climax is quick, perfunctory. She determinately does not allow her mind to linger upon the man from her dream, instead focusing on the act itself, the feeling. She still sighs his name,  _ Jaqen, _ when she peaks.

She hates herself afterwards. That was never really his name. He was never really hers. She never really knew him at all.

There’s a restlessness in her that satisfaction does not truly satisfy. The sea calls to her, the night sky, the stars above and the salt on the wind. She rises from her bed, dresses, and goes to pace the deck.

She opens her door. There’s a book outside it again, wrapped once more in leather. Tales from the First Men and the Children of the Forest. The leather unrolls with the scent of ginger and her cunt clenches.

When she goes above deck and stares out at the horizon she faces East and tonight the wind smells like spice and blood.

* * *

"What was her name?" she asks him one day. She's cut her arm on a nail and he's stitching it. She could do it herself, but Pasty Maester Pate has a gentler hand than she does and he'll use less thread. Their medical supplies are limited. They're starting to reach the point where if they don't find land soon they must either turn back or die. Nobody talks about turning back. They all knew what they were signing up for.

Pasty Maester Pate glances up at her, his pale eyes wide. "P-pardon?" His voice stutters but his hands are steady, his stitching immaculate. She studies it thoughtfully, tries to decide if the motions of his wrists are familiar, if the knots tied are of a shape she recognizes. Some movements, she knows, are inherently instinctual regardless of the face worn.

She can't remember. Did he do left over right, or right over left? How many stitches had he tied into her skin, but she can't remember how he'd done it?

"Your  _ lovely girl. _ " Her voice is too wistful. Control it. "What was her name?" Flat, empty. Good.

He blinks at her. Licks his lips. They're pale, as pasty as the rest of him, and a bit thin.

He had full lips. A mouth made for kissing. She'd have wasted untold hours devoting attention to them if he'd have let her. He never did. Rarely did they find time to explore each other's bodies. Touches were fleeting, quick and quiet, often disguised as discipline. Reward hidden within punishment, pleasure wearing the face of pain. She'd pinch the welts from his quarterstaff and make them sting while she touched herself at night. He had a habit of ruining good things for her, and she had a habit of finding good in the ruination.

"Rosy," Pasty Maester Pate answers finally, sounding hesitant.

It's the truth, but a lie too. Is it? She can't tell. She stares at him, expression blank. It's been a long time since she couldn't tell.

"Did you love her?" She's a glutton for punishment.

Pasty Maester Pate frowns. The next stitch he ties off hurts. "Signed up for a suicide mission because of her, didn't I?"

She shrugs. It pulls the stitches. She likes the sting. The pain makes her feel something. She doesn't feel as empty when she's hurt. " _ Valar morghulis, _ " she says. She hasn't said it in so long. The phrase is a threat and the threat is a promise. All men must die. The truest truth he'd ever told her. The truest truth she's ever heard.

She'd never told her siblings the full extent of where she was or what she did. They didn’t ask. They didn’t want to know.

The words are honey on her tongue. Pasty Master Pate watches her lips form them, and swallows.

* * *

She doesn't think Pasty Maester Pate is him. But she wants Pasty Maester Pate to be him. She thinks she wants.

Too many coincidences. She knew he'd had a long-term mission to the Citadel. Lovely girl. The scented leather. The pale skin that won't tan.

Too many differences, though, too. The stuttering. The blushing. It's too genuine. She knows mummery, knows acting. It doesn't read as fake. Rosy. The name was true. She thinks.

She thinks she wants but she knows she shouldn’t. They both betrayed each other.

It doesn’t matter if it is him or it isn’t, anyway. They’ll both die on this ship regardless. Soon, probably. Their provisions are running low. It's disappointing, but she accepts it.  _ Valar morghulis. _

Why not take a chance?

* * *

Pasty Maester Pate tastes like spice and heat when Arya kisses him.

She'd invited him to her cabin one evening on the premise of discussing all the books he'd let her borrow-- the crewmates on deck that had been present when she'd approached him had hooted and jeered until she'd cowed them with a stony glare, and Pasty Maester Pate stuttered and stumbled and blushed as he followed her, but she knows that none of them actually expected her to expect sex from it.

The surprised noise he makes when she closes the cabin door behind them and then grabs his face to drag it to her own can only be described as a squeak.

Pasty Maester Pate, to his credit, only dithers for a moment before kissing back. His lips are thin but he employs them well, a slick slide against her own as he puts his hands in her hair. Is this familiar? She can't tell if this is his muscle memory, holdovers from their unions of flesh in the dark corners of the House, or if Pasty Maester Pate just wants to touch her hair.

He doesn't wear the thick maester robes; too constricting, too heavy beneath the sun, and besides he was never a maester in full. Shedding clothing is quick, easy. She no longer wears armor on the ship, not after she became comfortable enough with the crew to accept that none of them were rapers, and if any of them are she'd kill them if they tried something and they know it.

"P-princess," Pasty Maester Pate stutters as she shoves him backwards towards the bed. Would he let her take charge like this? Would he let her be in control? Would he let her push him around, manipulate him into doing what  _ she _ wanted? She doesn't know. She can't tell. He might not, but Pasty Maester Pate does.

"Arya," she corrects, and when the backs of his knees meet the mattress he sits down and watches, his eyes wide, as she sinks to her knees in front of him.

" _ Arya, _ " he breathes as she takes him into her mouth.

She did this once for him in Braavos. He hadn't asked for it-- he didn't  _ ask _ for things like this, he just accepted them when they happened. Maybe he would let her be in charge after all. It was in his cell because his door had a lock and hers didn't, and she'd pleasured him sloppily, inexpertly, with her mouth while he moaned above her. It had to be fast then, they were both expected elsewhere, and she'd brought him to completion against her tongue so quickly that she'd been surprised at the speed. He hadn't seemed to care about her inexperience, and neither does Pasty Maester Pate; when she gags and has to pull away to cough he lets her, doesn't try to push her head back down before she's ready.

She works him until he's hard. Pasty Maester Pate's is thinner than the cock she'd sucked in Braavos, but the masks can change the entire body, not just the face, so she can't use genital size as evidence that it is or isn't him. She surges up to kiss him, takes him in her hand, pumps him between her fingers. The skin of his cock is spit-slick and dripping at the head and the foreskin rolls under her knuckles.

"Did you do this with Rosy?" she asks suddenly, scraping his lips with her teeth. "Did you fuck her?" Catch him off guard. Catch him in a lie. Play the game of faces.

Pasty Maester Pate swallows, his throat works, the apple of it bobs. His eyebrows are furrowed and his mouth is open. He hesitates for a long enough moment that she's suspicious again, she wonders for a brief second if he will ask her  _ who? _ before finally he shakes his head no. "Kisses," he admits, "and hands. Not-- not-- she was a maiden, it wasn't my place--"

"Well, I'm not a maiden," she says, and his eyes snap open to bore into hers. There's a flash of anger, there and gone, quick as a breath, anger and possession that has her feeling triumphant for the span of a moment before she remembers that some men are just assholes about that kind of thing and Pasty Maester Pate might be one of them. "So don't let that stop you now."

"I thought you said you didn't leave anyone behind." He might be prepared to accuse her some more, she doesn't know. She doesn't give him the opportunity; Arya kisses him again, hard and biting, and tugs at the cock in her hands. He liked it rough in Braavos, liked her palms dry and gripping as she touched him, liked her fist tight around him when he spilled over her fingers. Pasty Maester Pate doesn't seem to mind the friction either and moans between kisses.

Arya pulls her mouth from his and says, "No, I said I left  _ no one _ behind."

If the wording means anything to him, Pasty Maester Pate doesn't show it. But he seems more confident now, either because of her admission that she's lost her maidenhead or exposure to her want has assured him of it. He slips his fingers between her legs and groans to find her wet.

" _ Arya, _ " he moans again, and surprises her by taking her shoulders and pushing her onto her back on the bed. He slides from the mattress to kneel before her and spreads her knees with his hands, a mirror of their previous position when she'd taken him in her mouth.

She gasps, startled, "What--" and then keens when his mouth descends upon her lower lips. He groans against her cunt and licks at her pearl.

Pulling back slightly, Pasty Maester Pate whispers, "I've wanted to do this for  _ ages, _ " and before she can ask him  _ how long, _ for the months they've known each other on the ship or for years before that, his tongue is on her again, making her whimper and shift, her groin pressing against his face. She's never had  _ this _ before, only his fingers, only Gendry's cock, and it's new and different and overwhelming. When she moans she just barely restrains from saying his name, because she's not sure which one would come out.

He’s bloody  _ good _ at this, for a maester. Pasty Maester Pate sticks his fingers inside of her as a counterpoint to his tongue against her pearl, fucks her open, turns his head and kisses her thighs when they squeeze at either side of his head.

Would he do this so gently, so sweetly? Would he make the effort to make it good for her? She likes to think he would, but then she remembers how much he’d enjoyed inflicting pain, and how much she’d enjoyed it being inflicted.

Arya comes apart against his mouth, biting her lip against a moan. She shouldn’t make much noise-- the cabin walls are thin, and she doesn’t want the other men getting  _ ideas. _ She trusts them now, but time is running out, and who knows how high tempers will flare once they’re on double food rationing. She’s never been able to be loud before, when she’s been pleasured. In Braavos it was silent, his fingers against her cunt, her grabbing his sleeve to hold herself in place while he worked her, his other hand against her lips to muffle her whimpers. In Winterfell with Gendry they’d fucked in a forge that was open to anyone who could have walked by and they both kept quiet, kissing to keep their mouths occupied to not draw attention.

Pasty Maester Pate kisses up her body, trailing his lips from her cunt to her tummy to her tits, suckles at her breast and smears spit and cunt juice across her skin. When he touches her slit again, he whispers, “Can I?”

Arya nods. “Have you ever before?”

He huffs, rises to join her on the bed, spreads her thighs and settles himself between them. His cock rests against her cunt. She can feel it pulsing with his heartbeat. “I wasn’t always a maester,” he reminds her petulantly.

“You were never a maester,” she corrects. The statement is right even if she’s wrong, whether he’s him or he’s Pate. “Spill outside, though. On my belly. Unless you’ve got moontea stashed away somewhere.”

They’re literally about to fuck but he still blushes like a green boy and shakes his head. “I didn’t think anyone here would need it.”

She shrugs. “I didn’t either.”

They both sigh when he takes his cock in hand and presses it into her. They both groan when he bottoms out, root to stem, his bollocks warm and sticky against her pubic hair. They both gasp when he pulls away and slams back in.

Who he is doesn’t matter at this point, maybe. He could be anyone. He’s making her feel something and she loves it. She’s so tired of not feeling anything. He kisses her as he fucks into her and she breathes against his lips. They taste like her cunt.

When he spills, he pulls out of her and jerks his cock over her tummy, the sound wet and meaty, until the seed drips onto her abdomen, collecting in little pools around her navel. “Did you--” he starts to ask, and when she shakes her head he frowns and then determinedly moves back down. The first touch of his tongue to her over-sensitive pearl makes her shriek, and from there she moans and whimpers and cries, undone and unable to help herself, until he’s brought her to another climax with his mouth, her cunt dripping and open from being used by his prick.

There’s no way the crew won’t know he’s fucked her now. Dammit.

Afterwards there is an awkward silence that neither of them seem to know how to address.

Arya wants him to hold her. She wants him to call her  _ lovely girl _ and kiss her forehead, her cheeks, her shoulders. She wants him to draw her close and wrap his body around her. She wants to revel in the feel of him the way she was never able to before.

But she only wants him to do that if he’s him.

She doesn’t know what she wants Pasty Maester Pate to do.

“You can stay,” she decides finally, magnanimously. He smells like sweat and spice and ginger when he gingerly pulls aside the sheets to settling into them. She makes it clear she wants distance, though; she turns and puts her back to him, not kicking him out but not coddling him either.

She stares at the wall for a long time. For hours. For long enough that his breathing evens out as he drifts off to sleep. Then, slowly, she rolls around to look at him. He’s pale. Pasty. Pasty Maester Pate. Doughy, unmuscled. Even working on the ship for months as he has hasn’t given him much definition or tone. She can’t tell if it’s the magic of the masks hiding it, or if he just really is that skinny. She can’t tell anything. She’d thought that maybe fucking him would give her some insight, but even after that she’s not sure who he is. If he’s him.

There’s a spot at the jaw, where it meets the cheekbones. Just below the ear. If she touches it, will there be an indentation? A raised spot? Where a mask lays atop flesh?

If he’s him, she won’t be able to get close enough to touch without waking him. He was always a light sleeper. She never got to sleep with him, but she’d woken him from rest at times, and his wakening was efficient, economical, without any lingering in whatever dreams he may have dreamt. He could go from sound asleep one moment to wide awake the next with seemingly no transition.

Arya lifts her hand. There’s a soft rasp as the sheets slide against her skin, and she freezes and holds her breath until she’s determined that he hasn’t woken. She hesitates a few inches from touching him. If he’s him, he’ll wake if she gets any closer. If he isn’t him…

Does she want to know this? Can her heart handle the disappointment if he isn’t?

Can it handle the consequences if he is?

She deliberates for so long, her gaze focused on her fingers so close to his face, that she doesn’t even realize his eyes are open and watching her until he blinks.

They stare at each other in silence. His face doesn’t look like anything. Pasty Maester Pate, expressionless in her bed. After a long moment his lips part and he opens his mouth to speak.

What will he say? If he is him? If he isn’t?

From above deck, a horn is blown, and they both jerk in place, eyes shifting upwards instinctively to where the crowsnest is outside. Another horn blast.  _ Land sighted. _

Arya Stark rises from her bed and puts her clothes back on. He watches her move, silent. She leaves the cabin without saying anything. He doesn’t say anything either. She still doesn’t know if he’s him.

It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **edit:** i just realized show-only j/a fic readers may not realize the significance of pate. in the books, pate is a guy training to be a maester, and the faceless man who assumed the identity "jaqen", who arya interacted with in harrenhal, kills him and takes his face to infiltrate the citadel. rosy was pate's sweetheart. hopefully when/if the winds of winter gets published, we'll get some payoff for jaqen in the citadel.


End file.
